Sleepers
by Punctuator
Summary: A little darker, a little more eerie. Before the mission, the crew participates in an experimental transit procedure, with disturbing results. Rated for language, sensuality, and violence.
1. Chapter 1

**SLEEPERS**

Capa woke up crying. They all saw. He didn't seem to mind them seeing: more than the fact that they considered him a friend or at least a close colleague and were honestly concerned for him, he seemed genuinely unaware of their noticing. Not that any of them initially were in any condition, really, to notice anything.

Mace, for example, first saw Capa crying only because their chambers in the lab were side by side. Mace woke aware most intensely of the brilliance of the white light filling his eyes; he was secondarily most aware of the rushing in his ears, which he realized after fifteen dull seconds of simply sitting was the blood cascading through the arteries in his neck. All of them were sitting up, in their white skivvies, swaying slightly to the unfamiliar everyday flows and rhythms of their own bodies. Capa was on Mace's left; Cassie was to Capa's left. Mace dully watched her raise her hands slowly to her temples. On her face was a look of drunken concentration, teetering at the edge of frustration. She looked his way.

"Whoa," he mouthed at her.

Then he nodded toward Capa. Cassie turned her head slowly to look. Capa was sitting with his hands in his lap. His shoulders were loose, his blue-glass eyes half-closed. Tears were running down his cheeks.

"Capa--?" Mace said hoarsely. "Hey, man. Capa?"

Capa looked toward him. "Mace."

"You okay?"

Capa licked his lips. He wasn't making eye contact.

"I'm cold," he said.

* * *

"I love this part," said Jeff Lasky.

The supervising head of mission services for the Icarus II Project was a man sized for an earlier century, lean and narrow-shouldered in his gray lab coat. His eyes were a pale watery blue; his features were vague if once handsome, as though someone had taken an unfocused picture of his face from years ago and stuck it over his face. His forehead was high; faded golden hair hung in wisps like spindrift on the top of his head. The holobadge on his lapel titled him "Doctor." Through a wall of one-way glass, he was watching the crew of the _Icarus II_ wake from compressed cryo-sleep. Compressed in that, through the administration of a cocktail of semi-experimental chemicals and subsequent slumber in modified sensory-deprivation tanks, the six men and two women of the _Icarus II_ had experienced in the space of an early morning and afternoon roughly the equivalent of eight months' deep unconsciousness. Now they were waking.

To his left, Daniel Monroe, who was, as Lasky liked to quip, Lasky's "left hand of God" when it came to project rank and who wore also a lab coat and the label "Doctor," looked through the dark glass at the crew of the _Icarus II_ struggling through various stages of helpless stillness to re-orient themselves to the conscious world. He was quite Lasky's opposite in terms of build-- he'd had the childhood nickname "Ape," and he could still hear its echoes, even through a cladding of muscle and tidy grooming and academic degrees-- and in terms of outlook as well. He muttered: "That's because you're a fucking sadist."

"Say something, Dan?" Dr. Lasky asked mildly.

"No."

"Looks like Dr. Capa is having trouble."

Capa was standing with a hand over his face. His head was down; his shoulders were shaking in countermotion to the deep breaths he was drawing into and shoving from his lungs. Monroe glanced at the man's readings on the instrument bank to his right. Vitals good. But he looked crushed somehow. He'd been a model of modulated energy when he'd arrived with the others; he bordered on "delicate" in terms of build and was deceptively young-looking, but he'd been buoying himself along seemingly on a combination of bright-eyed quick focus and wiry muscle. Now he looked like a little boy. The two in the crew who were most obviously his friends, the slight dark-haired woman called Cassidy and the most military-looking of the men, Mace, were with him. Capa pulled his hand down to his jaw. He was scowling at something, not at them; Monroe heard his flat voice through the burble on the intercom: "I'm alright. I'm fine."

Then Monroe realized: _He's scowling at the tears in his eyes._ The doctor frowned. "He's crying."

"Looks like we've got a washout," Lasky said. "Got another one right there." He pointed at the glass, toward the opposite side of the room, where the _Icarus'_ doctor, Searle, was standing beside his chamber, not moving, not blinking. He was swaying slightly on his feet. Next to him were the crew's botanist, the woman Corazon, and Trey, the ship's navigator. Corazon laid a hand on Searle's left bicep, and even from twenty feet away, Monroe saw a shudder rumble its way through the doctor's strongly built frame. Searle grimaced; he gingerly removed Corazon's hand from his arm.

"Please don't. Don't do that," he said. A concerned frown settled on Corazon's clean-boned face; she let her hand drop to her side.

Next to Monroe, behind the glass, Lasky smiled. "Let's get started on the debriefings, shall we?"

* * *

First, though, came detox. A tech with a high forehead and a young but pinched face entered the lab bearing a tray holding eight large plastic cups. Inside the cups was a mossy-colored semi-liquid that looked like it had been scraped from dock pilings.

"You folks are scheduled for debriefing," he said to Kaneda and his crew. "First, though, you have to drink this. All of it. There are bathrooms there and there--" -- and he nodded to the ends of the lab. "Extra ones in the hall."

"Why do we need to know that?" Trey asked.

"I think we're about to find out," Corazon said.

Doubtful looks all around. Kaneda took the first glass, his hand shaking slightly, and raised it to the others.

"To your health. Ladies. Gentlemen."

* * *

_What did you dream?_

Sometimes it was simple. The military types were the easiest with whom to deal. They were typically straightforward; said straightforwardness usually permeated every aspect of their lives. Even their dreams.

For instance, Mace. He lounged back on the sofa in Monroe's office, stretched, put a hand behind his head. "Stars. I'm lying on my back in a field of long grass. Warm night. Insects buzzing, but nothing's biting me. No mosquitoes. I can smell the grass. Sweet, y'know? Spicy, kinda. And I'm counting stars. Like diamond chips up in the sky."

"Is anyone with you, Mr. Mace?"

Mace looked at him and grinned slyly. "That'd be _telling,_ sir."

* * *

Or Cassidy:

"I'm running," she said.

"What are you running from, Miss Cassidy?" Monroe asked.

"Nothing. I'm running toward-- I'm not sure."

"Is it something good or something bad?"

"Good. Definitely good. I'm running on a trail through a forest. Sunlight through the leaves. And the sun is--" She smiled. "You know how kids do those drawings--? Like the sun is smiling?"

"Could you stop running if you wanted to?"

"Yes. But I don't want to. I mean, I feel fine. I can feel my breath in my lungs and my heart beating. I can feel the trail beneath my shoes-- and they're my favorite old runners-- and the sun's on my hair and shoulders, and the wind's in my face-- and it's perfect. Just-- perfect."

* * *

But things weren't as simple with the others. Nor as perfect. When all of his crew had finished debriefing and dressing, Kaneda met them in the reception area outside the lab.

"We will not be sleeping our way to the sun," he said.

"Why not?" Harvey asked.

"Two of us reacted less than optimally to the procedure."

Mace spoke: "Did they say who?"

"That information is confidential, Mr. Mace." Kaneda looked around at his crew, the barest hint of troubling on his bearded face. "For the remainder of the day, we are to rest. The procedure may leave us with residual disorientation. Doctors Lasky and Monroe suggest that we forgo our mission-related duties until tomorrow."

* * *

For people given a day off-- such as remained of this day-- they were surprisingly sober as they walked the long hall leading out of the mission health center. Capa stalked on ahead, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his parka. The others followed. Mace touched Cassie's arm, slowed his pace. She slowed with him.

"So who do you think flipped out?" he asked.

"Not us."

"Goes without saying."

"Searle. He's wound too tight."

"My thought, too. Who else?"

Cassie hesitated. Mace followed her line of sight to Capa's hunched shoulders.

"Maybe you should go after him," he said. "Stick with him for a while."

She glanced at him wryly. "Yes, sir."

Mace smiled. "Like you'll be suffering."

* * *

Trey watched Cassie join Capa, watched him acknowledge her with a slight smile and a smattering if not of pleasure then of relief. They walked off together, not touching, certainly not holding hands. Still, Trey had to try not to look mortified. He failed. He felt it in his gut like a sputtering hot backwash of that awful detoxifier.

Said Harvey, at his side: "Maybe she'll be a triple-timer. You never know."

"Shut up." Trey sounded harsher than he meant to; he was having a hard time shaking his unsteadiness. It felt as if it were broadcasting from his midriff: not nausea, exactly, nor fear. Something between the two.

"Oh, come on," said Harvey-- and Trey caught a slight quaver in his voice-- "We're all gonna be village bicycles by the time this is over."

"You're married."

"It's nearly a three-year mission. Things can happen."

"Your wife okay with that?"

If he sounded bitter, Harvey didn't seem to mind. He was a good man that way, Harvey was. "We've talked. There's things we-- She understands."

"Wish we could've slept it."

"Well, we can't."

They were back at the dorms, lingering in the old comfortable early evening dimness of the common area, when Trey finally asked: "Do you think it was me? One of the ones who cracked?"

"Should I think it was you?"

"No." Trey chose and arranged his next words carefully. "See-- it wasn't this. The sleep thing. But I'm wondering how much all of these doctors know about us. I told someone something at our first psych screenings--"

Harvey smiled. "What? That you're a hacker map geek?"

"No. That I was doing it for my cat."

"It--? You mean the mission."

"Yeah."

"I'll pray for you." Harvey shook his head at Trey's questioning look. "Nothing personal. It's a Lutheran thing. We pray for people."

"Really."

"Yeah, really."

"Pray for my cat, then."

"Okay: I'll pray for your cat."

Trey smiled, a little sheepishly. "Thanks."

From the direction of the kitchen, Mace approached, carrying a cup of something that smelled like either coffee or motor oil. He blew steam from the surface, sipped. "You guys doing alright?"

Harvey and Trey exchanged looks; they both looked toward Searle, who was sprawled on the sofa with a reader screen propped on his chest. He seemed to be looking right through it.

"I, umm--" Trey frowned, considering. "I don't want to be alone right now."

Mace said to him while following Trey's worried look to the doctor on the sofa: "Do you know how gay that sounds?"

"Yeah, I do. And I don't care."

"I know what you mean, man," Harvey said.

Mace looked at him. "Your old lady coming in tonight?"

"No. Next weekend."

"What say we bowl a few games, grab a couple beers?"

"At that place in--" Trey snorted. "Man, that's a dive."

"Naw, it'll be fun. Maybe we'll get in a bar fight." Mace called toward the sofa: "You in, Searle?"

Searle shut off the screen and sat up. He looked as though he'd been asleep. "What about Capa and Cassie?"

Trey tried not to sound resentful. He very nearly succeeded. "Think they're, uh, getting in some quality time."

Mace pasted on a grin. "Like we'd need Brainiac in a fight anyway."

Searle stood. "I was thinking of Cassie." He seemed to thaw as he spoke. "Those little Air Force gals, they're fierce."

* * *

The fierce one and her quiet charge, meanwhile, had strolled their way to the Treehugger Cafe, the most militantly vegetarian restaurant for three hundred miles, if one were to believe the mantra topping the blackboard that served as a menu. When Capa suggested the place, Cassie's gut response was an instantaneous and almost primordial craving for a hamburger-- and she could almost hear Mace laughing: "So Brainiac dragged you to the Dirtweed Express!" But she kept her cravings and imaginings to herself. Rare enough to see Capa eat on a good day; his suggesting food of any kind after his trauma this afternoon was a very positive sign.

They descended a treacherous flight of open-backed stairs into a cramped but clean and warm dining area not unlike a cave where they sat on indifferently legged chairs at a heavy wooden table and ate sweet potato and apple and ginger soup and tore and dunked chunks of herb bread and drank green tea from old stoneware mugs. People sat around them, students mostly, eating and talking in a comfortable jumble of sweatered torsos and winterwear and elbows. When Capa and Cassie were nearly done with their food, a longhaired woman in a shapeless charcoal sweater and old jeans perched herself with a guitar on a tall stool in a corner across the room and began to play and sing.

She had a sweet, limber voice. The room quieted. Capa sat transfixed. His face was focused but peaceful; his eyes seemed to fill with soft blue light. Cassie went and got them more tea. Then she simply sat with him and listened.

* * *

When they left the Treehugger, the moon was up. It glared down from the blue-black sky, a three-quarters disc in chalky white wearing a corona of ice crystals. The stars glittered from a safe distance. It was very cold.

They ended up back at Capa's dorm. It was in a quieter, older building than hers, and the powers-that-be had given him more space. He was up three flights of badly lit wooden stairs. The elevator hadn't worked properly, he said, for years. Neither of them minded, of course. He was just looking for something to say. His blue-sky eyes had gone all shy when he'd held the outer door for her.

She noted the equally shy half-smile he tried to hide as he swiped his inside keycard, and she felt herself shyly half-smile back while a tingling having nothing to do with sweet-potato soup burred through her belly, and then she half wondered what she was doing here with him.

Sometimes she hated civilians. Men like Mace she understood. She liked Mace. The idea-- _Do me and you've done me_-- they both could subscribe to that. Capa was something other. Her military way of thinking broke him down simply and bleakly: He was too intelligent for his own good. Moreover, he had to be too intelligent for the sake of everyone else. Mace was smart and practical. Uncomplicated. Capa possessed a core of discipline like a thick twisting of copper wire. He had a hard, lean body; he exercised it regularly; Mace said (and she agreed) that he'd be a devil in a fight. But he might get himself killed crossing a street.

Very simply-- in the ninety seconds from the icewater clarity of the night air to the relative warmth of his rooms, she could tell: his complexities were entangling her. What was worse, she didn't mind.

She kept seeking comparisons as he took her jacket. Her only difficulty with Mace had come about a week ago. They had a rule, and it was simple: We need our sleep, so we don't sleep together. So last week on an unspecified day, at or around oh-two-thirty hours, as Mace mumbled "G'night, Cass" and rolled over toward the wall and commenced snoring, she'd pulled on her clothes and her boots and her parka and gone out the door. Of her own dorm.

She had to fumble for her keycard. Then she nearly rugburned her hand smacking his crewcut. "Asshole--!"

Mace rolled over, laughing. "Sorry-- sorry: Okay, I'm going. I'm going--!"

Maybe she smiled slightly. Or blushed slightly. At any rate, he caught her remembering it. Capa. Right here, right now, watching her with his eyes like that final edge of blue between the sky and space.

He said, flatly: "We're making a mistake."

Abruptly, that unspecified day of last week was gone. She found herself very much in the present.

"Do you want me to agree?" she asked him.

We'll get it out of our systems, she thought. At worst, by the time the mission is truly underway, we'll be exes, comfortable or not. She thought it again, just for emphasis, just to know if he could read her thoughts: sometimes she hated civilians. Complicating situations that didn't need complicating.

And sometimes--

One thing not complex, one thing that could strike her directly, right in the heart: his smile. It struck her now.

"No," he said.

He hung up her coat, and they went amiably through the preliminaries. Coffee? No. Music? Yes. Ancient Brian Eno, providing a quiet soundtrack to a slow, sweeping look at his place and his furniture (secondhand but solid and comfortable) and the things on his walls. A Soviet-era space poster. A photograph of his sister, as fine-boned and clear-eyed and pale as her brother. Her son and daughter. A touch-board covered in numbers, papers covered in numbers, too. Quiet talk, about families, the music they'd just heard at the 'hugger, about anything but the mission-- more especially about anything but the morning and the lab and how he'd woken. Then he touched her, drew her to him gently by the waist, moved her hair away and kissed her neck, and the preliminaries ended.

* * *

Still-- and this was a time and touching and unclothing later-- she wasn't completely in the present. Another part of her code with Mace came to her: a simple question.

"Could you let me die?" she'd asked him.

"If I had to, yeah," Mace replied. "And you'd do the same for me."

"Yeah."

She asked now almost without intending to-- as grotesque an example of timing as there could have been-- right as Capa was stretching out beside her on the bed he'd just unmade for them. He frowned slightly-- not at her, she realized, but at the question. He touched her cheek.

"If you died knowing that I loved you."

It wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. Something ached suddenly in her throat. She reached for the light, and he leaned across her and put his hand on her arm. He nuzzled her. "Leave it, Cass."

* * *

Later, though, as she came out of a doze, the light was out. And Capa wasn't with her. His side of the bed was empty; the rumpled sheet was cool.

For a moment, she was disoriented-- possibly, still, an aftereffect of the hibernation drugs: had he really been with her at all? She looked beyond the bed. The room was filled with a blend of shadow and pale deep blue light; it was coming from the window, where the curtain had been pulled to the side. Then she saw: he was standing there, nude, looking out at the moon.

"Capa--?"

He didn't turn. His voice was dreamy: "Still reflects so much light."

She got up. It was cold. She padded over to him, brushed fingers through his hair. "Are you okay?"

"Sure."

She paused, the air tingling on her skin. "Haven't been around women much, have you?"

"Was it that bad?"

"What-- Oh." She blushed, realizing; she chuckled. "No. No. Really. It's always-- I'm not very good at this kind of thing. It's just that guys have always tried harder to lie to me." She slipped her arms around his slender torso, pressed up to him from behind. "When I ask you if you're okay, you don't have to say 'yes' if it's not true."

"Could you fix it, though? If I weren't okay-- could you fix me?"

"Probably not. But I can listen."

"You can be here."

"That, too."

"Maybe that's enough."

A moment. She slid her hands up and across his chest and held him by the shoulders, hugging herself closer to him. She pressed her lips to a freckle on his pale skin, laid her cheek against his shoulder blade. Capa lifted one of her hands to his mouth, brushed his lips across her knuckles. Then she felt him shiver. "Christ, Cass-- you're freezing."

"_We're_ freezing." She caught his hand in hers, kept her eyes on his as he turned to her. He gave her the slightest of smiles, and she smiled back. He looked like an angel, tender and remote. "Come on back to bed."

They resettled. Renestled in the sheets and blankets, face to face. He kissed her, a little apologetically; she kissed him back, and the apology melted away. She drew him closer; Capa pressed up to her; she embraced him with her legs as well as her arms, and all the heat they'd lost at the window was returning, flowing between them--

-- and he hesitated. Frustration in his eyes. Fear as well. She lay still; she held him gently, carefully. He traced fingers through the hair near her right temple.

"Do you want to know what I dreamed?" he asked quietly. "In the lab?"

"Tell me."

"I dreamt that I was the sun and that I was dying."

More than cold: a sudden pocket of hollowness deep inside her. "Go on."

"Darkness around me, in all directions. Palpable. Cold. So impossibly fucking cold. Like I was made of heat and light and I was throwing myself against it, holding it back. And I could feel myself failing. Like something I'd been lifting that I couldn't lift anymore. I could feel-- It was inside me. The darkness. It got inside me, and it was poisoning me from the inside out. I was collapsing inward-- but I wasn't: the blackness had weight and density, and it was crushing me. Until finally I couldn't tell where I ended and the darkness began. My sight was going-- or my light was. The same thing. It was like it got in behind my eyes-- I could feel myself going. All the same. All that fucking blackness entering me. Inside me. And the cold-- Oh, fuck--"

"Shh-- Capa, Capa: shh--" Cassie drew his head down to her shoulder, took his weight, held him. He lay against her, shaking. She waited, waited longer, patiently. Finally his breathing eased. He began to relax.

But then he murmured, near her right ear: "That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"Yes. I'm here because you're fucking insane."

"It's probably true."

"Ask me if I care."

"Cass--"

"They pumped us full of semi-experimental drugs and stuck us in senso-dep tanks. Some of us could handle it; some of us couldn't. Deal with it, Robert."

"The mission would have been easier--"

"Bullshit." She shifted beneath him, wrapped him more comfortably in her arms. "Do you want to know what would have scared the hell out of me?"

He asked softly: "What?"

"Knowing that I was going to be ninety million miles from home waiting for a wake-up call from some damn computer. I'm glad we're not sleeping it. I hate that you dreamed what you did. If I could, I'd-- But I'm glad we're not sleeping."

He raised his head, looked into her eyes. She hadn't lied; now she had nothing to hide. She met his gaze evenly. He touched her lips--

"Right now," he said, "I am, too."

He kissed her. Cassie welcomed his mouth with hers. And, for the time being, they stayed awake.


	2. Chapter 2

Cassie and Capa had no way of knowing-- actually, given that their experiment in staying awake was becoming exponentially more pleasant, making them take notice might have been difficult-- that the evening had already ended for those on the bowling expedition. Around nine-thirty, Trey had poured the last of the beer from the cloudy plastic pitcher into his glass and looked behind them, beyond the lanes, toward the shoe rental and the neon signs for Schlitz and Leinenkugel.

"Think we scared off the waitress," he said.

"_Was_ there a waitress?" Mace countered.

Searle got up to bowl. He hefted his ball-- and paused. "Hell-- I completely forgot. We could've asked Kaneda and Corazon if they wanted to come along."

"Think they're off 'om'-ing together somewhere," Trey said.

Pauses all 'round. Mace smirked. "Wait-- Did Trey just make a funny?"

Harvey nodded: "I think Trey just made a funny."

"Jesus, that's a first."

Trey snickered into his beer. "Yep."

"You're pathetic." Searle shook his head, prowled to the line, and launched his first ball.

No: now he was embarrassed. Trey focused his blush into his foamy glass and tried to sound casual. "No, uh, really-- A couple of her family members were coming into town. She told me yesterday. They asked if he'd like to join them for dinner."

"Right," Harvey drawled wickedly.

Searle spun out a hook that picked up his spare. He came down off the boards and grabbed the empty pitcher. "I'll get it." He headed for the alcove where the bar was as Harvey got up to bowl.

Mace said: "No overhand shots, Harv."

"Could only help."

Trey dropped his voice well into the cellar: "Use the Force, Luke."

But the Force was not with Mr. Harvey. He left a mittful of pins standing; the sweeper cleared them; Trey had his first shot and nearly decimated his new fresh pin set. He was waiting for his ball to return when from the bar they heard shouts and the sound of glass breaking.

"Shit--" Mace was on his feet. Harvey and Trey followed him at a run.

Searle was facing off against a man holding a knife. Two other guys looked ready to jump in. Maybe half a dozen others were hanging back. There was a fresh pitcher of beer standing in a pool of slosh on a table to Searle's left. The bartender was reaching for the phone. Before Mace could say or do anything, the man with the knife lunged. Searle leaned sharply to the side. He caught the wrist of the hand holding the knife, pulled and twisted. With his free hand, he hit the man, hard, in the jaw. The knife went flying. It thunked across the carpeted floor. Harvey stepped in quickly and picked it up. The two men who'd looked ready to get involved shrank back.

But Searle wasn't done. There were two pool tables in the room. He slammed the man who'd held the knife facedown onto the nearest one and twisted his right arm backwards and bore down on it until the man's wrist was pinned, his hand palm-up against the green felt.

"It'll grow back. Let me show you," he said.

Mace thought he'd misheard. "What's going on, Searle?"

"I said it'll grow back." There were two large glass beer mugs on a nearby table. Searle grabbed one and smashed it on the pool table's heavy dark edge. "Here: watch this." He crushed the man's wrist harder against the table top. The man writhed in pain, shouting curses. And with the largest piece of glass, Searle--

Mace grabbed Searle's shoulder. "What are you doing, man?"

Searle said nothing. He jabbed quickly, passing under his left arm his right hand and the shard of glass it held; Mace jumped back, feeling the glass slit the fabric of his shirt over his stomach. Then Searle refocused; Mace heard a scream from the man on the table--

-- and Trey hit Searle in the head with the pitcher of beer.

* * *

In a row of chairs outside the office of Dr. Jeff Lasky, in various stages of beer-scented disrepair, sat half the crew of the _Icarus II_. Trey, who'd managed to walk into the only punch to fly before the cops showed up, was sporting a splendid black eye. Mace bore a line of itching stitches across his midriff. Harvey, though blood- and beer-splattered, was unwounded outwardly. But he hadn't had the sense to drop the knife before the police arrived, and as a result he'd come the closest of any of them to being arrested. His embarrassment had set itself as a frown on his handsome broad face. In contrast, Searle, his right temple stitched and bandaged, seemed thoroughly untroubled. He'd asked "What happened?" at the hospital. That was all. Kaneda and Corazon had come for them and hauled them back in a campus van. She was wearing a magnificent red dress. 

"You look very nice, Corazon," Harvey had said.

"Please shut up, Mr. Harvey," Kaneda said in return.

Now it was past twenty-three hundred hours, and the four bowlers were waiting outside Dr. Lasky's office for their turns before an impromptu hearing board. Lasky had already gone in, of course, and Dr. Monroe, and a representative from the local police department and the head of campus security as well. Kaneda, having driven Corazon home, stalked in still wearing the black suit and gray silk tie he'd worn to dinner.

He stopped in front of them, scowling. "Earth's last, best hope, indeed. Mr. Harvey, come with me."

Harvey rose and followed him into the office. The door shut behind them.

* * *

Mace was the last one called. Kaneda instructed Harvey to escort Searle and Trey back to the dorms. Then he caught Mace's eye and nodded toward the open door of Lasky's office. Mace got up. 

He figured the inquest had already heard the story at least twice-- three times if they'd managed to get anything out of the evening's broken-glass surgical Zen master-- so when he entered, Mace simply looked directly at Lasky and asked: "What's wrong with Searle, sir?"

Lasky's blue eyes met his with a watery glitter. "Mr. Trey hit him in the head with a pitcher of beer."

"That's not what I meant--"

Kaneda spoke: "Witnesses in the bar said that the other man threw the first punch. Dr. Searle was legitimately restraining him when--"

Mace looked at him incredulously. "Trey hit him because he was trying to cut the guy's hand off. Searle said something about-- He said it would grow back. The guy's hand. Trey was right there: he must've heard him--"

"Mr. Trey mentioned Dr. Searle speaking," Lasky said. "He didn't catch the words."

Mace could feel his heart edging toward the base of his throat. "I heard the med techs at the hospital, sir. Searle severed three tendons in the man's--"

"That's enough, Mr. Mace," said Kaneda.

"If he'd've hit the artery, he might have--"

"Mr. Mace--!" Lasky snapped. Mace turned to him angrily. Lasky looked back at him, coldly. "You're stymied, aren't you? You've run up against something a good thorough screw won't fix."

Mace frowned. "Sir-- pardon me?"

"It's bad enough you've bedded your pilot, Mr. Mace. Even worse you'd pimp her out. What: did you think Dr. Capa would find Lieutenant Cassidy therapeutic?"

Mace felt his ears go hot. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a frown descend on Kaneda's face. "Sir, I don't--"

"Yes or no, Mr. Mace."

"I-- Yes, sir."

The room went quiet. His captain's disappointment in him: Mace could sense it. He waited, feeling cold and slightly sick. Kaneda chose his next words and spoke quietly:

"Mr. Harvey is second in command, Mr. Mace. But everyone in the crew looks to you. You're a natural leader."

"Or ringleader," Lasky offered drily.

"Whatever the term--" Kaneda looked coolly at Lasky before returning his attention to Mace: "-- I would encourage you, Mr. Mace, not to abuse a position of trust. It could prove detrimental to the mission. Do you understand?"

Mace looked evenly at Kaneda and squared his shoulders against his confusion and frustration. Against his shame, too. "Yes, sir, I do."

"Thank you. You are dismissed, Mr. Mace."

* * *

The boy left. The police officer and the campus security representative followed shortly thereafter. Monroe waited through the followup with Kaneda. When the captain of the _Icarus II_ was beyond the closed door of Lasky's office, he said, "I'll generate a list of potential replacements for Dr. Searle." 

"Whatever for?"

Monroe stared at Lasky. He took a deep breath and released it slowly. "He's obviously unstable, Jeff."

"No, he's not." Lasky tipped back in his chair and steepled his long fingers under his chin. "Residual effects from the drugs. We can put him through another round of detox for that. I'm just trying to figure out where he might have heard of it."

"Heard of what?"

"Plan B. Though some people are calling it 'Plan H.' 'H' for 'Hades,' Dan." Lasky smiled like a sturgeon. His small sharp teeth were pearl-gray in the light from his desk lamp. "How would you feel about living underground?"

* * *

Mace walked back to the dorm. The cold seeped under his jacket to tug at his stitches; he had neither hat nor gloves, and even before he was halfway home he could clearly imagine ice crystals forming in his cheeks and his fingers and the tips of his ears. He caught himself nearly veering toward the building where Cassie was housed; he told himself not to look at the dark windows. Likely she wasn't there, and even if she were-- 

He stopped. He was alone, wasn't he? Not just on an icy sidewalk under a black sky and bluish-white pathlamps on a largely co-opted college campus somewhere in North America. Really alone. He thought, _If I fell here, I'd die. It's that cold. Cold enough to kill._

"Get a grip, man." He said it aloud. His breath brushed past his lips and hung briefly in the air before him, a tiny icy cloud. "Got a job to do."

He went back to the dorm. All quiet. No sign of Harvey or Trey or Searle. Mace opened a tin of beef stew and ate it without tasting it. Then he went to his room and calmed himself to a sleep pitted with troubled, nonspecific dreams.

* * *

The next day was as cold and clear as the day before. Mace had his breakfast and his morning go-round with the guys from engineering, and then, just before lunch, he caught Cassie as she was coming out of the flight simulator. She was giving one of the techies hell about the programming, and the techie-- a standard-issue bad haircut and worse glasses in an insulated blue boiler suit-- was only too glad to take his touchpad and retreat when Mace approached. 

"Hey." Cassie turned her scowl halfway into a wry smile when she saw him. "I heard you guys got in a fight."

"Yeah. We coulda used you."

"Everybody okay?"

"Searle kinda got knocked in the head, and Trey looks like half a raccoon, but yeah. Everything's fine."

The uncertainty he felt: maybe she heard it. Maybe she didn't. "That's good."

"How'd it go with Brainiac?"

She might have flinched. He couldn't be sure: he wasn't accustomed to watching her for clues.

"It went alright."

"What--?" Mace told himself to smile. "Did he get you drunk and talk you into playing strip chess?"

"Something like that."

"Must've been pretty rough."

"Yeah. Mace--" She looked away--

-- and it was as though he were outside himself, watching himself ask: "What, Cass?"

"I think I need to stick with him a while longer."

"_You_ need--"

"He needs it."

He heard himself say: "You need it, too."

"Mace--"

"It's alright, Cass." A smile. He meant it. "Good of the mission, right?"

"Right."

Silent question, silent consent. He leaned in and kissed her, more tenderly, maybe, than he might have yesterday or the day before.

"See you on the flight deck, okay?"

She smiled back at him. "Okay."

* * *

Lasky was right, Monroe thought. It was amazing how accurately Dr. Searle described it. 

Plan B.

Through the remainder of the previous night, after Mace and Kaneda left Lasky's office, Dr. Monroe sat in his own office reading the files Lasky had sent his way. A note preceded them: _Truly surprised you didn't know about this, Dan. Keep it under your hat._ When Monroe finished his first reading of the Deeplife Protocol, the sun had just eased clear of the trees east of the campus.

He encrypted the files and left his office, feeling tired and numb. He failed for two hours to sleep. He was nearly late for his first meeting regarding the _Icarus II_ and her environmental systems; he sleep-walked through the remainder of his working day. Searle had seen it all in his dream. Somehow.

Late that afternoon, alone in his office, Monroe re-cued the recording of the doctor's debriefing following the hibernation test. He watched and listened and felt as though the heat at his core were draining away.

"...but there are no stars," Searle was saying. He was sitting on the black sofa in Lasky's office, moving his hands as he talked. The camera had been hidden; he was looking to the left of the frame. Lasky's head occasionally occluded him. "One of those ideas people have about space, isn't it? All those glittering stars. When all it is is dark. It's so black, you can feel it pressing on your eyes. Like it's solid. And it's cold. I should go underground."

"Why underground, Doctor?" Lasky asked.

"Because that's where we live."

"'We'?"

"The humans, sir. Humanity. But I don't have to go in right away if I don't want to. There's almost no atmosphere left, but I can breathe just fine."

"Why is that?"

On screen, Dr. Searle shuddered, but he smiled, too. Monroe found it frightening. "Because of the c[ockroaches, sir. Now I can-- I can breathe through my skin. If I lose a limb-- I can chop off my arm, and it'll grow back. Not right away-- it'll take time, but-- The geneticists-- they knew two things would survive for certain. Us and the roaches. Always be roaches, right? So they spliced us together. Our DNA."

"Have they?"

"Have--" Searle looked momentarily confused. His thick brows descended over his eyes. "Had. In my dream. They said we'd failed. They'd gone to the backup plan. We-- not us, sir. Not the _Icarus_. We're dead. _Were_ dead."

He paused. His dark eyes looked through Lasky, through the camera lens. Monroe shrank back slightly.

"So mankind moved underground," Searle continued. His voice was distant and calm. "They made nuclear suns. Cooked up new isotopes. New elements, way off the end of the periodic table. But the radiation-- That's why we needed the roaches. So we can-- All that radiation, you understand. The roaches can take it. Now we can, too. While we--"

"While we what, Dr. Searle?" Lasky prompted quietly.

"While we search for another planet, sir. A new place to live. A new hive."

* * *

Dr. Monroe watched the sun edge below clouds to the west. Whatever you are, he thought, deity or life-bringer or star: we're ready to be on our own. We're ready to be gods. To prove it, we'll survive without you. We'll mold our genes to suit our circumstances, and then we'll find ourselves circumstances more suitable. Without you. Your heat and light: we thank you for it. Now, little star, feel free to die. We don't need you anymore. 

"Please don't go," he whispered.

The sun slid below the horizon. Dusk drifted like a curtain of bluish dust from the snowy west. Monroe left the window.

**THE END**


End file.
